US can't even get the little stuff right — still too little COVID personal protective gear — and a glaring counter example from history

© 2020 Peter Free

 

10 July 2020

 

 

We really should be pissed

 

Capitalism, Trump and Congress are competing to see who's the worst ever.

 

 

I'll make the bigger point . . .

 

. . . after you read the following COVID-related extract:

 

 

[A]s the United States continues to reopen and the number cases and hospitalizations surge, that troubling shortage of personal protective equipment — and especially N95 masks — is once again a problem.

 

A survey from the National Nurses Union found that 85 percent of nurses reported being asked to reuse personal protective equipment that’s meant to be single-use.

 

The shortage is so dire that the inventor of the powerful filtration material in these masks has come out of retirement to look for ways to decontaminate his invention and make them safer for reuse.

 

But why is there still a shortage?

 

Despite months of shutdown that were meant to reduce pressure on the health care system and give the US more time to prepare, production for personal protective equipment, which includes N95 masks, medical gowns, and medical gloves, never adjusted to meet the massive demand caused by the pandemic.

 

At the same time, reopening in many states has meant that other businesses, like outpatient medical offices and construction firms, are now in search of N95 masks too.

 

Meanwhile, the recent surge in Covid-19 cases that has followed reopening is almost certainly leading to a greater need for protective equipment in hospitals, especially in the places currently experiencing massive outbreaks, like Florida and Texas.

 

© 2020 Rebecca Heilweil, America still doesn’t have enough N95 masks, Vox (10 July 2020)

 

 

Naturally . . .

 

. . . the United States is incapable of mounting an appropriate response to the N95 shortage because the Russians didn't cause it.

 

Absent Evil Putin and his Band of Devil Russians, why would we be concerned?

 

 

Why the N95 supply matters

 

I suggested a bit back that — if the US were an actually serious country — its Government would have prompted an enormous PPE-production initiative, when SARS-CoV-2 started wandering around.

 

 

In our context today, PPE means medically related "personal protective equipment".

 

 

If people had ready and affordable access to N95 masks, during the COVID pandemic — the vulnerable and vulnerable-feeling could protect themselves with the somewhat virus-proof masks — while everyone else and the entire economy continued freely about their business.

 

Freedom for all, so to speak.

 

 

But . . .

 

Instead of seeing the merit in such a simple and comparatively inexpensive idea, here we are — at least 9 months after the epidemic began — still doing virtually nothing. While other nations have virtually no worries about the adequacy of their medical equipment supplies.

 

Is this loserdom (on our part) something to be proud of?

 

We gonna chant "USA" times 3?

 

Maybe have a flyover costing millions of dollars in misspent money?

 

 

A counter example (demonstrating actual competence) lifted from history

 

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviets moved their manufacturing base away from their opponent's rapidly advancing forces.

 

About 2,500 factories were relocated thousands of kilometers — to sit behind the protection of the Ural Mountains. Or even farther into Siberia.

 

Despite glitches, the industrial relocation constituted a significant achievement of demonstrated practical competence and determined will.

 

With their base of materiel production now secure, the Red Army eventually sopped up about 75 percent of Germany's military and production might and eventually squashed Nazidom.

 

 

So, with that example in mind

 

Do y'all still think that our 2020 era United States:

 

 

which cannot even protect its own nurses from COVID

 

by producing enough

 

comparatively piddling

 

cloth, paper and plastic face masks

 

is going to start a war

 

with the descendants of those Soviets . . .

 

 

. . . and win it?

 

 

The moral? — America is exceptional at . . .

 

. . . treating humanity like a throw-away Burger Franchise toy.

 

"If there's no loot to be had from it, let 'em suffer 'n die" seems to be our national motto.

 

And can you imagine what will happen, if the United States ever gets into a real conflict with a materially gifted and genuinely competent adversary?

 

We have become an interminably flabby embarrassment to ourselves.

 

Every true American patriot should be angry as hell.